CHAPTER XII: ROTA WAITOA. 1866.
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CHAPTER XII.
IT was while the war was still raging in the neighbourhood of the East Coast that the first native clergyman, Rota Waitoa, came up from thence for rest and change, and (though we did not at first realise the dangerous nature of his illness) to die among his old friends. He was quite a youth when he volunteered to accompany the Bishop overland to Auckland in 1842. He was then a broad-shouldered, broad-faced, merry-looking lad, with something of the African type of features, and much of the warm, generous, trusting nature of the negro in him. He attached himself greatly to the Bishop, and for the next ten years never left him, nor returned to his home in the South, save for a short visit to his kinsfolk. He rose from one post of usefulness to another--was native schoolmaster at St. John's College, then house steward, and being found faithful in all his ways, and blameless of life, was ordained deacon at St. Paul's Church, Auckland, in 1852. Many hearts were stirred by the sight of this brown-faced man -- the first deacon of the
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Maori Church. The few words spoken to him by the Bishop in his own language were words of joy and thankfulness, mingled with solemn fatherly warning.
After his ordination in 1852 he went down at once to take charge of a village at the East Cape and soon began to win golden opinions from his own countrymen, and from the settlers in the neighbourhood. A naval officer, whose vessel was on the coast, went over to see him in his parsonage, and found him with his wife and child living quite in English fashion. He had married a girl trained at St. Stephen's School. At the end of eighteen months he came up at his own desire to St. John's College on a visit. To use his own words to his people when they asked him why he was leaving them, he came to "fill his seed-bags again, having sown all he took down with him the year before." He landed in our bay, and it was pleasant to see his good-humoured, honest face again. He looked very clerical, and was warmly welcomed by all his old friends. It was the time of the Crimean war, and he was asked to preach at St. Barnabas' Native Chapel on the day set apart as one of humiliation. He took the whole service, and preached a very good sermon, and soon turned the discourse to the subject of Maori wars and land quarrels, and spoke of the need of humiliation and prayer for all Christian men.
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He had asked the native girls at St. Stephen's in the morning what they were going to church for, and one of them naively answered: "We are going to church to pray that the Russians may be killed." Rota stayed for some time at the College, reading with Archdeacon Abraham, and taking great pains to improve his knowledge of Scripture. His people had been plying him with many quaint questions. One was: "Whether the serpent which St. Paul shook off his hand into the fire was Satan?" &c. Many of the natives delighted in figurative explanations. We used to find it very difficult with some of the converts to extract, when teaching them, the plain meaning of a text or passage of Scripture. They would throw themselves back in their chairs, half close their eyes, and begin to "spiritualise." Dear old Rota had been too well and accurately trained to favour fanciful interpretations. A friend wrote of him during his visit: "I wish you could see the perfect ease and simplicity of his manner, without the least assumption or forwardness. You would have been much struck by this, could you have looked in at our social group of an evening after tea--Rota would sit and watch the English boys playing at chess, or learn to play himself--or have seen him after prayers talking of his parish with my husband, and bringing forward any difficulty that occurred to him."
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After a few weeks he went back with his fresh bag of seed-corn, and years passed on in happy, useful work. He had a school of boys and girls in his house, and a large district under his charge. Some of the villages were eighteen or thirty miles distant, and to these he rode on alternate Sundays, with his surplice in a saddle-bag. We kept him well supplied with white cravats, and his wife took great pride in getting these up. He came up from time to time for more teaching, and once after his wife's death, which was followed by the loss of a much-loved little girl. After a while he married again, a pretty, young, half-caste orphan. Just before the birth of her little daughter, Rota had been reading with great interest a translation of Robertson's "Sketches of Church History," and was specially delighted with the account of Perpetua and her companions, and of their martyrdom at Carthage. He tried to persuade several of his flock to give the martyr's name to their infant daughters; but they thought it a newfangled one, and declined. When his own baby girl was born she was baptised Perpetua. He might have passed for some old African Presbyter as he stood at the font with his daughter in his arms, his brown face lit up with fatherly pride and love. Troublous times were at hand. War was desolating the district. His people were in a state of confusion; but he remained at his post comforting, teaching, warning,
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till one Sunday he was laid up through a severe fall from his horse. The Bishop invited him to come up to Auckland with his wife and children. He was looking very ill, and, though as affectionate as ever, had lost much of his brightness. As he did not rally, medical aid was called in, and he was found to have aneurism of the heart. We were summoned in on our way back from church in January, 1866, to St. Stephen's, by the tidings that dear Rota was dying. It was a pitiful scene. He was lying on a mattress on the floor in extremis. The sac of blood had burst. Beside him knelt his pretty young wife, sobbing, and in her arms was the merry little Perpetua cooing and laughing, all unconscious of her great loss. A kind old Scotchwoman--the matron --was in the room; she had nursed Rota faithfully during the last days of his illness. We could not help smiling at her form of praise, though pleased to hear her hearty appreciation of our first Maori clergyman: "He was a gude mon, was Mr. Rota, a gude mon. I never knew a better mon." And then as a climax--"I never knew a better Scotch-mon."
His body was laid to rest in the St. Stephen's churchyard, and a cross, with his name engraven on it, put up in memoriam. Rota's widow was married again, after a year or two, to an excellent native clergyman in the North. The little Perpetua, when
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old enough, was received into the St. Stephen's Orphan Home. She was a pretty, bright, fair child, with black, curly hair. She inherited her father's sunny temper, and was the pet and plaything of the school. She died two years ago of consumption. She was wonderfully bright and patient through her long illness, and was the general peacemaker. No cloud dimmed her trust in God. The funeral was at St. Stephen's, and the orphans, mostly English children, were all present, and sang beside her grave, "Safe in the arms of Jesus."
